Technical Abstract:
Porcine circovirus (PCV) is a member of the Circoviridae family, which includes a group of diverse animal viruses with small, closed circular, single-stranded DNA that replicates their genome through double-stranded intermediates. The large intergenic region of PCV contains the Ori with multiple elements crucial for viral DNA replication. There is the 3’-portion of the Rep gene promoter, the octanucleotide motif that embeds the presumed cleavage-site for initiation of plus-strand DNA replication, the palindromic sequence that form the stem of the 4-stranded rolling circle melting-pot DNA replication model, the signal for termination of DNA replication, and the direct H repeats which are binding-sites for the essential Rep and Rep’ proteins (REP-complex) in vitro. In this work, we examined the importance of the immediate sequences flanking the palindromic stem-loop structure of the melting-pot: the A-rich sequence (on the left) and the hexanucleotide repeats, H1/H2 and H3/H4 (on the right) with respect to viral protein synthesis, self-DNA replication and progeny virus production.